Trio

The Bally Trio, designed by Ted Zale and manufactured in November 1965, is a single-player electro-mechanical add-a-ball game (Model 768-C) built for the Italian market, with a theme centered on happiness, music, singing, and dancing. Its production quantity is likely counted alongside the standard U.S. replay version of the same game.

One of the more unusual aspects of the Trio is its ball-counting solution: because the backglass has no window to display added balls, the silkscreened numbers 1 through 9 normally used for a replay game's match feature are repurposed here as an added-ball counter. The game supports 3- or 5-ball play, and its construction reflects the reliable, straightforward electro-mechanical engineering typical of Bally's mid-1960s output.

The backglass art evokes the carefree spirit of the mid-1960s through its music-and-dance theme. Beyond its technical specifications and design elements, little additional information is documented about this machine, but its clever ball-counting trick makes it a notable curiosity for collectors of Bally's export-market EM games.